章 20: Bareback Sand Valley
"In just a few minutes, we'll come by a large valley, you can see it in the horizon."
The Valley had rock formations which were elevated to stand between the two rocky mountains. A small stream was moving along, allowing small animals to drink.
Monsters in the Soul Realm don't need to much to survive, only some specified monsters would need large sustenance or nothing at all to survive in the wilderness.
The Mountains were named Mount Sha and Hua. Named after the sound of shifting sand and the sounds when the caves on the sides have wind pass through them.
At mere appearance from afar, it was desolate from the looks of it, but you can never judge a book by its cover. The Red Beak Vultures usually reside in the mountain caves residing near the top and the cliffs. They come down to the valley to kill some of the rodent monsters to eat and the group formulated their plans catering to the fact they come down daily.
Fire Axe assigned everyone to start digging up small pot holes, though small, it was also their limits in the Soul Realm. Excavating is difficult since a special way to dig in the Soul Realm was needed. Archaeologists and historians would have hard times studying anything in this region due to the desert, the special method of excavating would be too time consuming to use so they always needed more people in the field to learn these techniques. The Soul Realm was too vast so any studies were from existing sites and were refined in these spots. They would use context clues to create a timeline of any event that happened way before their discovery. As of now, only a general timeline had been made without much detailed areas.
They began digging up mounds, requiring every bit of strength to do so as the special method was in use.
The time taken to reach in the Valley was 5 days, if they couldn't finish within 20 days, it would be recognized as a failure and would have to compensate for wasting their client's time. They were given the ability to accept or deny any requests so it was within their responsibility to compensate even just a bit of the time wasted.
2 days go by, and they managed to dig up three mounds using all their strength. The vultures care little of what humans do but if it was extremely famished, it would attack with all its might to secure food at any other living creature, even themselves.
The three mounds were situated near one another with a large tree in the middle. The tree was used to holster a trap so they can begin trapping them.
Some flesh of monsters would be used to lure the vultures in which were located on top of the mounds and three harpoons were tied to the tree and hammered to the ground. This was the use of the rope they brought, since it was created in the Soul Realm, it was definitely more durable and fit for the job, even entwining three of the ropes to create a stronger one. They would throw the harpoons to the vulture's wing, securing them so they could only fly in certain areas where they would be able to strike them. The trap was very simple and the most easiest of the other traps, requiring much more expensive materials to be used and wasted.
They place morsels of red meat, fresh and not cleaned efficiently so it emanated the smell to its surroundings, making the vultures believe it was just any ordinary corpse so they can inhibit their behavior of a natural scavenger.
In mere hours, three, presumably from the same flock, came rushing in to secure the food. They circled the air to make sure it was safe. Bai Li and the rest were situated under the tree so it would be much more difficult to sense their presence and with a few more rotations, they all came down once at a time, following a line as they descended.
THey continued moving in the same manner as they were already in the range of the harpoons. And that was when..
"Now!"
All three harpoons came rushing towards their target, the sounds of the wind that it penetrated was strong and struck their intended targets. Only one of the harpoons missed the wing but struck the leg of the creature, if they don't do kill it in time, it would break away easily and would start sqawking to alert the rest.
"Tomahawk, kill that one!"
"On it!"
He leaped into action and began sprinting over, two axes in hand.
Tomahawk was the fastest of the bunch and Bai Li, who was much more smaller than them and much more faster, was weak so they couldn't give him the responsibility.
Tomahawk was very powerful when fighting duels with his agile tomahawks he wield. Fire Axe's weapon could be used efficiently against large swarms but it was average to use against duels.
"I'll take on this one, Ju Dun and you will fight the other."
Ju Dun's ability to defend the vultures could be done very easily, but with Ju Dun's weaponry, it would be much more difficult to fight the bird that was very agile. It was a tactical decision.
"Hmmmm!"
Ju Dun began running at his fastest pace, which was rather slow, and motioned Bai Li to come along. Ju Dun bashed his shield, scraping his blade on as well. The sound was like someone using his nails on a chalkboard and immediately enraged the creature. The material used for the shield was like a ceramic plate, which made it very easy to create the scraping noise.
Bai Li followed shortly after, pulling out his Berat sword and positioned himself near the rear.
The vulture came close to strike Ju Dun with its talon, but it was immediately blocked with the massive shield. The massive size of the vulture, whose height was only half of a human's average height, but with the wingspan of 4 meters, came crashing down on his shield. His hands went numb with that strike, but it immediately began moving back after that strike, trying to leap backwards with its wings. But with that simple movement, it created an opening. Bai Li ran across a rock and leaped to the back of the vulture, immediately pushing the blade of his sword deep, using gravity to create a downward slashing motion. A portion of its wing was sliced off! The power and sharpness of the sword must've been cared for to keep at its top quality. The Berat sword was not to be messed with.
The vulture sqawked in pain as a large line was carved into its wing, reducing its flight capabilities by more than half, immediately tried to retaliate on the man who made his injury, but Ju Dun bashed his shield into the body of the bird, which broke its line of thought and continued striking them.
Tomahawk had already dealt with his bird and continued to help Fire Axe, who was having a hard time landing a good strike on the swift bird.
Bai Li came once more from the back and tried piercing the head. It moved to the right with its functioning wing and pushed back Bai Li.
Screeee!
The winds produced from the wings was very strong and pushed him back, he landed on the ground, picking himself up shortly.
Ju Dun was the only one facing the bird at the moment so he did his best defending the next strike. Using its red beak, it continuously struck his shield, his arm obviously being strained by the force of impact with each and every peck.
Bai Li recovered and came running once more, rushing to strike, but this time, using his soul energy to power his body. He wanted to be conservative of his consumption of energy as it would be used up quickly if not used well.
He powered his body with what little energy he had and came down with a diagonal strike on the back of the vulture. The strike registered and left a deep incision on the beast, only piercing the other side, but it preservered from the strike, it was now gravely injured.
But before it could recover, Ju Dun came with the last strike using his small blade and rushed it at the head of the bird.
The fight ended just like that and Fire Axe and Tomahawk already finished their strike.
"Good work!"
They had just secured three of the fifty corpses of the bird, they began eating the roasted spider legs earlier due to its vast size, in a matter of 20 days, it would be done before the deadline if they went at this rate.
"Now that I think of it, don't you think it was a bit abnormal? Usually they aren't pack hunters and fight by themselves, they were famished as well so they were quite stubborn," Tomahawk first spoke his thoughts as they resided in a low altitude cave.
"Now that I think about it, yeah, even the rodent population was scarce, what happened to all of them?" Bai Li's replied with Tomahawk's remark.
"Well, let's just continue on our mission, the quicker we are, the faster we can leave the area, I don't feel good about it." Fire Axe didn't care much and wanted to finish the mission so they could leave.
Ju Dun groaned as well.
The first two days were like that as they killed yet another group of vultures, even one extra vulture appeared, making it a bit more difficult to be dealt with. But the next day, something was happening without their knowledge. The flock of vultures were becoming paranoid and cawing indefinitely.
Whatever it was, it was definitely not happy with the presence of these birds.
A large roar was let out and the birds were gone.
They were all dead by the roar.
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